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Category: Intellectual property

Section 512 report – general overview of section 512

Secondary Liability

Secondary liability doctrines enable copyright owners to bring claims against third parties that have some relationship to persons who themselves commit infringement (i.e., “direct” infringers). As the Supreme Court has noted, “although ‘the Copyright Act does not expressly render anyone liable for infringement committed by another,’ these doctrines of secondary liability emerged from common law principles and are well established in the law.”

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A claim concerning mainly ownership accrues only once

This case concerns the alleged copyright infringement of a lightning storm graphic that originally appeared on the guitar of Darrell Abbott, late guitarist of the heavy-metal band Pantera.

Buddy Webster is a guitar maker and technician who goes by the name “Buddy Blaze.” In 1985, he modified a Dean ML guitar, produced by Dean, and paid someone to paint a lightning storm graphic on the guitar. In 1987, Webster gave the guitar to his friend Darrell Abbott.

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MakeUp copyright

Whether a human body part may qualify as a “tangible medium of expression” for Makeup copyright purposes?

Mourabit is a makeup artist, and in 2013, he “did the make up artistry” for a fashion photo shoot organized by W Magazine. Klein was the photographer at the Photo Shoot.

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Whether there is a nearly per se rule against trademark protection for a “generic.com” term?

A generic name – the name of a class of products or services – is ineligible for federal trademark registration. Booking.com, an enterprise that maintains a travel-reservation website by the same name, sought federal registration of marks including the term “Booking.com.”

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SWD IA on the EU copyright modernization – impacts of third option for fair remuneration of authors and performers

Imposing transparency obligations on the contractual counterparty of creators supported by a contract adjustment right and a dispute resolution mechanism

I. Contract adjustment mechanism

This mechanism would improve the effectiveness of the reporting obligation under Option 2 since it would provide creators with legal means to request adjustment of the remuneration on the basis of the information received in reporting statements.

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Googles v Google

In 1995, Steven Silvers created the Googles brand. Two years later, he registered the Googles trademark and the internet domain name www.googles.com. The website launched in 1998 as a children’s education and entertainment website. That year, the search engine Google adopted the Google name. Subsequently, in 2005, Silvers sued Google for trademark infringement.

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EU illegal IPTV research – the actors of the illegal IPTV ecosystem

Another part of fundamental EU research on IPTV. Now – actors and ecosystems participants. The ecosystem for unauthorised IPTV includes several actors. They consist of primary infringers (the providers of the unauthorised content), a series of active and passive intermediaries, and final consumers. In addition, a number of facilitators and enablers can also be involved by giving instructions and providing tutorials for the installation of middleware — software instrumental for the fruition of the unauthorised content.

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